• Thomas Jefferson is famous for having said, "I cannot live without books." What is less well-known is he had a long list of things he said he could not live without and the top of the list was wine, women and music.

• Among North Americans, 38.4 percent have used a rotary telephone.

• Between 1990 and 2005, the number of Swedes who suffer from bunions increased 87 percent. In the same time frame, the number of Norwegians who suffer from bunions has decreased 78 percent.

• In China, the fifth most famous American is Paula Abdul, due to there being an all-American-Idol channel on their basic cable package.

• In 2008 the number of people who first accessed the internet decreased for the first time ever.

• In 2005, the average Christmas gift in North America weighed 11.476 ounces.

• Although the average American will see 872 commercials aired by automobile manufacturers that suggest a car would be a good holiday gift, only 700-800 vehicles are actually given as gifts.

• In a 1990 poll it was revealed that among registered Republicans, Richard Nixon's least popular act was discouraging holiday lights during December of 1973.

• The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) calculates that between 1985 and 2005 an average of 47 new Holiday CDs/albums were released each year.

• As of 2003, 29.3 percent of living Americans had ever experienced a white Christmas.

• The moniker "mobile home" is derived from an early large manufacturer of travel trailers, Mobile Home Travel Trailers, which was headquartered in Mobile, Alabama. For more than 20 years, the company aggressively tried to legally enforce the "Mobile Home" trademark, but the term was declared part of the public domain in 1968.

• The common laboratory rat is on the endangered species list, as there are estimated to be less than 2,000 left in the wild.

• The 1972 collapse of the pedestrian bridge at Appalachian State University had the highest death toll of any pedestrian bridge accident in the United States, killing 53. Most of those killed were with the school marching band.

• A recent NASA publication stated that the most common cause of UFO reports over the past decade had been due to "optical fluorescence of oxygen and nitrogen in the ionosphere".

• According to a report published by the University of North Carolina, college physics majors have the highest IQ and political science majors the lowest. Ironically, psychology majors were also near the bottom of the list, though that was dismissed as not significant due to the small sample size.